Curse of the Blair Witch (1999)

I have to say I am a huge fan of "The Blair Witch Project". Horror films with unseen danger are exactly my cup of tea, so I would maybe even go so far and call it my favorite horror movie of all time. This piece here is a 43-minute add-on, which basically tells us what happened after the film, i.e. how they found the victims, investigated into the matter etc. There are interviews with family members etc. Still, you always have to keep in mind that this is not a real documentary, even if IMDb lists it as such. It's really more of a sequel than anything else, and also more than the actual very weak sequel. There are news telecasts in here, but everything about it is fake and only adds to the myth of the Blair Witch. In my opinion, these 43 minutes are at their best when they stay pretty close to the subject and I did not really care a whole lot about the references to the history of witches or a child murderer. Actually, I believe, if they had done without some of that and kept this film at 30 minutes max maybe, this could have been really great. But, even the way it is, it's still fairly decent, maybe also because this was written and directed by Myrick and Sánchez, the duo that also came up with the original film, a bit of a rarity that you see the original directors also coming up with the making-of. A bit of a pity that the two never came close again to their success from "Blair Witch Project" in the last 15 years and are not really prolific anymore in terms of movie-making. Same can be said about two of the three actors, including Heather Donahue. A bit of a shame that most of the people involved with the movie stayed one-hit wonders. Still, we can be grateful for what they came up with. This is a solid mockumentary here and I recommend it to everybody who loved the original movie.

It is a favourite sport among 'sophisticated' Europeans to laugh at gullible Americans, and it is a pastime, I'm ashamed to admit, I've indulged in myself. Ho ho! we chortle when we read about audiences feeling sick at such a tame film as THE EXORCIST. Hee hee! we titter as reports come of spectators needing psychiatrists after THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. But I for one envy American faith. Sometimes cynicism can be so tiring, and I'm really jealous of Americans who were genuinely scared watching BLAIR. Apparently this mockumentary played a large part in the film's mythology - I don't know how true this is. As I mentioned in my review, I was scared witless by BLAIR, and felt great anguish for some time after it. Watching CURSE was of great therepeutic value - shorn of the big screen and the mechanics of the horror film, I was able to dominate the material, to emasculate its very real hold on me.I think this mockumentary both weakens and strengthens the film. Without having seen it, the film is extraordinarily rich and suggestive, playing havoc with the viewer who carries no preconceptions (like myself). Being not quite sure what to expect only increases the tension and the terror. If I'd seen this mockumentary, I don't think I'd have been as scared. I'd have known too much, many things would have been explained (or at least graspable), overarching theories would have been more easily explicable.Not knowing too profoundly about the legend helps the film. However, it is also chilling in that the students therefore move from one set of bearings (map, compass), to another (the forest's enchanted circle, the signifiers of the Blair Witch myth). The mockumentary strengthens the film by showing us the outside world of the events, the context and apparatus from which the students disappeared, making their trauma less abstract, more real. It is so rational and comforting, filled with family, friends, and experts, that it makes the disappearance all the more bewildering and shocking.It is alleged that this mockumentary was shown for real on a factual US television station. While I find this hard to believe, I've been asking myself how I'd have dealt with it in those conditions. I'm not surprised people were taken in - it's brilliantly made and acted, a spot-on recreation of a certain kind of programme-making, right down to the amusingly portentous music, used like double spacing after a paragraph. The only false note is the 1940s footage of the killer, which clearly looks like it was filmed recently.If I'd seen this mockumentary - and I generally avoid UNSOLVED MYSTERIES-type TV - I don't think I'd have been as moved as I was at the film. The story itself is very compelling, and I love the whole creation of a myth to the extent that I can't believe now that the Blair Witch never existed.But only fiction can created the character and empathy needed for true horror to succeed; the film reclaims the personal absent (necessarily) from this 'documentary'. CURSE has other points to make - the idea of both history and documentary (the recording of that history) as fabrication; the persistant cultural fear of independent women; the tensions and perversions of small town life; the Gothic strangeness, regardless of the supernatural, or life on the US margins; the deep failure of American masculinity, from Heather's film school teacher to the Sherrif. A lovely document, vastly preferable to THE X-FILES.

I recently saw BWP and thought, "Finally! Someone has relied on raw human emotion as a fear factor!" As a teenager I enjoyed slasher flicks but was never scared (probably due to the outlandishness of it all), but this movie really got my adrenaline going! Warning: every single minute of this movie is NOT scary, but the 3 or 4 "scary" scenes make this a worthwhile film. I have never seen a film that made my hands shake and heart pound! I actually felt as if I was "with" them - not just looking in on them. As for the critics who claimed that other theater-goers were laughing: they were. Mike was a very comical guy at times! These critics who misinterpreted the laughter are probably the ones who "didn't get the ending" (or the movie in general) because they weren't paying attention!! As for the ending just remember it is vital that you pay attention to the beginning of the film! Remember: you are at a theater - not at home - there is no rewind!

This TV "documentary" is better than the movie -- and made by the same people. These are very talented people -- they have the folklore of witches down cold and they also have the patter and pattern of documentaries down equally cold. The use of interviews and the extended story of the witch and her curse all add up to the sense of a realistic story.I haven't seen this kind of verisimilitude since Orson Welles' made people believe that Martians were landing in NJ. As a teacher and writer, I plan to use this show and the film in my drama classes to illustrate verisimilitude, atmosphere, and style. The fact that all of this is done so realistically has started a national debate as to whether this myth and the movie are real. What fun!